Dr. Francine Ye has come forward with a newly discovered superbug, drawing the concern of the international science community. What surprises scientists, however, isn’t the superbug’s resistance to antibiotics or transmission potential, but the fact that it isn’t a bacterium at all. The organism Dr. Ye had researched and published about in international scientific journals was recently found to be colonies of abnormally large bees.
This new species of bug, an offshoot of “Wallace’s giant bee” dubbed “Francine’s giant bee,” is bred in a makeshift lab off the coast of Oxnard, California. Reporters are flocking to the Channel Islands to get to the bottom of this “dangerous” bug, and they are meeting with Ye at her research station — the likes of which they had never seen.
“Welcome, let me show you around!” says Dr. Ye, upon agreeing to give a tour of the lab. “We’ve raised these bees in specialized outdoor hives, which have sensors that record changes in temperature and total hive weight. Our team here observed record-breaking sizes of bees in the last few weeks, which we believe is the product of feeding the bees a protein powder solution through imitation flowers. Initially, there were many attempts to create a larger bee via irradiation, as shown by our radiation chamber here. Almost all of these attempts failed, leading only to one of our researchers becoming a sort of bee-man hybrid.
“Keep up the good work, Thomas!” she says, and briefly waves toward the fuzzy silhouette of a man before turning the corner and whispering, “I’m worried about him.”
“Now, sure this bug is big, but what makes this bug dangerous?” she continues. “Here we have the insect MMA studio, where a generation of female worker bees is getting certified. It’s a rigorous process that they put themselves through, but the results are evident: these bees have clearly established their dominance over nearby sources of nectar and pollen. Camera footage shows female bees subduing wasps with a flurry of knee-strikes. Additionally, some enterprising bees have been equipping themselves with the mandibles and stingers of fallen wasps, using them as swords to continue the fight. Our team here is currently in the process of training the bees to hold bigger swords, hopefully to the point where they’d be holding regular, human-sized swords.”
The International Institute for Species Exploration has verified the existence of this bee as a new species almost immediately, under pressure from CALPIRG. Ye herself has begun a series of talks around California, petitioning to have Francine’s giant bee represent the United States in the 2020 Olympic Games.
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